


(No Matter What You Hoped to Be) Be What You Are

by zeldadestry



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:44:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5460224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You will probably never understand that - more than anything on this earth - I value that I can trust you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	(No Matter What You Hoped to Be) Be What You Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide to my assigned buddy, I hope you enjoy it!  
> Happy Yuletide to all!

When I was a little girl, I used to sometimes imagine that my mother would return, as a ghost, and talk to me, tell me stories, and even sing to me.

I didn’t consider this fancy scary or strange, not ever, but at first I kept it to myself. When I finally dared to share it, everyone scolded me, called me morbid and sick and even questioned my religious instruction because of course my mother’s soul was ensconced in heaven and therefore locked away from me until my own death, if I should be lucky enough to find myself in the same place. 

No one even tried to understand or sympathize, except for Hamlet. 

“That sounds nice,” he said. “I can tell that it would make you happy to hear her voice because you miss her so much.”

After that, I couldn’t help but want to follow him around whenever I saw him.

 

Late nights are no problem for me, I can always sleep in, except that the phone is ringing right now, from across the room, where I dropped my bag last night, and the clock on the bedside table reads 9:07, which means I got into bed less than four hours ago.

Caller id says it’s my dad. I try for a smile, to make my voice light, but only manage a grimace before I pick up and say, “Morning.”

“Ophelia! Greetings, my darling! How are you on this illustrious Wednesday?”

“Fine, thank you. And yourself?”

“Never better, never better.” 

I get back into bed and curl up on my side, so tempted to drift back into sleep as he chatters on through his usual litany of who’s rising in the ranks of the organization and who’s falling and who’s fallen so far they’ve reached the ground floor and been escorted from the lobby with their shoebox of personal possessions in their hands. Occasionally I might hear a name I recognize but, even then, I temper my interest both because it’s better, experience has taught me, to maintain as much distance as possible, and also because, even if I do badly want to know how someone is doing, I’m never sure I can trust father’s take on the subject.

Fifteen minutes into the call I use father’s first extended pause to say, “It was so good catching up but I should let you get back to work.”

“Things that need mending, yes, situations that require my delicate touch to bring them to a good end.”

“Exactly.”

“Darling, sweetheart, dear one-” I know what’s coming next but I’m not going to make it any easier for him by supplying anything without his prompt. I breathe deep while I wait. “You would tell me, of course, if you’ve seen him? You would provide a full report? Not for my sake, of course, but for his dear mother’s, his dear mother’s sake, you see, for she worries. Children can not know how thoroughly their parents are consumed with thoughts of them, with tender hopes for their prosperity, and their wellbeing. Has he contacted you?” 

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

And that is - I like to think I’m patient and I like to think I’m fair - but that is too fucking much. “Of course I’m sure.”

“Very well, very well. It was only a question. How will we ever learn if we are afraid to ask? We prove our bravery with our inquiries.”

“You think so?” 

“I do, of course I do! I am not some charlatan who makes declarations without proof.” He clears his throat. “But I- they need me in the boardroom.” 

“I’m sure they do. Take care, Dad. I hope you have a good day.”

“And you, too, angel!”

I don’t know why it is that, no matter how ridiculous he seems to me when we talk, I always miss him most as soon as I’ve said good bye.

 

The restaurant’s lounge won’t be open for another hour or so but, when I walk in early that evening, there’s already someone standing at the bar, waiting.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Horatio says.

“No, not at all.” I lean into his chest as I hug him, it’s so easy to feel he could bear all my weight, and it makes me smile how he always bends down to kiss the crown of my head. “Can I get you anything?” I ask, after reluctantly pulling away. “Coffee? Whiskey?”

He scrubs at his eyes. “I look that good, huh?”

“You look tired.”

“No, I sleep alright.”

“Worn out, then?”

“Yeah.”

I rub my hand up and down over his upper arm. “Hot chocolate will fix anything.”

He laughs. “I’ll take a raincheck on that one.”

“Fair enough.” I sit down on the barstool closest to him and swivel it so I can look up into his solemn face. “What’s up, handsome?”

“He’s having a hard time.”

“Careful.”

“What?”

“You know they- they still try to get info out of me.”

“So? You don’t have to give any.”

“I know. But it’s- I don’t even want to have the possibility of slipping up, you know?”

“Alright, then I’ll only talk about this from my own perspective. I’m worried about him. I was hoping you might- I want you to visit him.”

I turn away from him and towards the mirror that hangs behind the bar. There I see the same shadow who haunts me. I don’t call it my reflection. It’s simply an image of someone pretty and sad, a woman who grew up without ever growing away from a girl who longed for a mother. I have this dream, sometimes, and it’s stupid because I don’t even - it’s been a long time since I thought of him in any kind of romantic context - but, I dream, sometimes, that I’m supposed to marry Hamlet. They’ve put me in this long, heavy dress, and I’m carrying a huge bouquet of flowers in my hands, and, before I leave the room where I’ve been cloistered to make my way to the church, Gertrude steps in to see me. Gertrude steps in and she takes my face between her hands and she kisses my cheeks and she calls me daughter. “He doesn’t want to see me.”

“He doesn’t know what he wants.”

“I get why he’s so angry with me, I really do. It’s because he trusted me, once, and that’s what made him hate me when he thought I’d betrayed him.”

“Don’t say that.” Horatio takes my hand into his own. His touch is sure, just right, and I wonder what it must be like to have it as one’s own, not only as a blessing occasionally borrowed. “That’s not fair to you. We were all concerned. You answered their questions because you thought it might help.”

“Yes, right, that, of course. But that wasn’t-” I hold his hand tighter because I don’t want him to let go, no matter what he thinks of what I say. “I also answered because I was trying to do what my father and Gertrude wanted.” 

“You tried to be loyal to all of them.”

I shake my head “Can’t serve two masters, right? I failed. I fucked up.”

“Like we all do.”

“He doesn’t see it as you do- he’s an idealist and he can’t bear to have his ideals stained.” I smile at him, then, and I take my hand away from his, because I know to go on holding it is only to pretend. “You’re the only one, out of all of us, that isn’t somehow ruined for him.”

 

I did not think of it when I was young. Why would I? I was a child and I had faith like a child and I believed at the heart of this world there was a fountain of goodness, water springing not from greed or ambition but from kindness and tenderness.

And now the fall haunts me and yet I also long for it, for the ground upon which I may break myself. My body. My self? Either way, either way.

“Where were you?” It is late, much later than I would’ve expected him. 

“Don’t you mean welcome home, babe, can I help you with those groceries?” I stand in his way and cross my arms. “Such a fuckin charmer.” Horatio rolls his eyes and pushes past me to enter the kitchen. He places the bags down on the counter and turns to open the fridge. “Hey, since when are we out of beer?”

“Finished the case this afternoon.”

“You’re lucky I picked up a six pack of stout, but it’s gonna need to chill before we have any.”

“Where were you?” 

“Shopping. I picked up that book you special ordered.”

The book. When I place an order the volume always seems essential but by the time it is delivered I recognize it as just another twig for the bonfire. I have over fifty shelves filled, a collection worth nothing, not when it only makes it more difficult to find the right words- maybe there are no right words. “You were gone for hours.”

“You know I always come back.”

I believe him and yet I also know that there is, as they say, no honor among thieves and there are so many in this world who would look you in the eye as you speak with them and then smile before walking away with your pilfered treasures in their hands. I believe that he will choose to come back to me, yes, but I do not believe that someone in this world, or the world itself, might not take him from me, perhaps to punish me, or only out of spite.

I have too many dreams- dreams of everyone close to me dead, except for him, the very one I would most fear to lose. It seems my subconscious can not stand even a taste of that fate.

I wait and watch while he puts the rest of the purchases away and then, when I can be sure of having his complete attention upon me, I say, “Horatio?”

He turns towards me. “Yes,” he says, and he knows that is all he needs to say. He assures me that he is here. He scruffs his knuckles back and forth over my cheek until I grab his hand and press it to my mouth. Somehow his fingers stay warm, no matter how cold it gets outside. “You just wake up?”

“Yeah.” His eyes are a very dark brown and when I have their gaze upon me, then, somehow, only then, can I say, yes, I am alive, I exist and perhaps, perhaps, even matter. “Where were you?” I shouldn’t need to ask, my trust should be enough, shouldn’t it? And yet. “Someone offered you hot chocolate? I saw it in my dream.” Fear then, visible on his face, but his body never moves. His hands do not shake or tremble. The way he stands, how he faces everything directly, reminds me of the story of what a most devout monk said to his potential murderer, their mirrored back and forth conversation. The attacker asks: “Don’t you know who I am? I could run this sword through you without a second thought.” The monk answers: “Don’t you know who I am? You could run that sword through me and I wouldn’t give it a second thought.” That monk reminds me of you, my friend. As for me? All I have are thoughts. “Someone offered you-”

“Hot chocolate,” Horatio echoes. “Yes. It was Ophelia.”

“But you didn’t have any.”

“I didn’t want her to go to any trouble.”

“Let me make some for you.”

“If it pleases you.”

A strange, formal, old-fashioned phrase- but it works. He makes everything work, somehow. A natural man, a person who does only what is within his character, inside it, and no more. There is a religion in that, if only I could find my way to it.

 

I find him standing in front of the living room windows, looking down at the street below us. When I rest my hand on his lower back, he shivers. “You can’t sleep?”

“Bad dreams.”

“Again?”

“Always.”

“I know that’s not true.”

“These days, it is.”

“Tell me.”

“You’ll laugh and rightfully so. I’m pathetic, a sop, a sap, and a sore excuse for a philosopher.” His voice rises. “How could you possibly understand? I am a creature of misery while you are something both stronger and finer, do you realize?”

“You should’ve been an actor, you know that?”

“Are you calling me melodramatic, Horatio?”

“From shouting to hissing in ten seconds? Melodramatic as hell.”

“And you, of course, are something more like a stoic. Therefore we are well matched.” He presses his cheek to mine. “Why did you go to see Ophelia?”

I hold him closer and whisper the truth. “You will not tell me what troubles you and that means that I do not know how to comfort you. I thought that - perhaps - you might allow her to do so.”

“You love me.”

“You know I do.”

“And you will never know how much it means to me, how good you are, both to me and for me. You will probably never understand that - more than anything on this earth - I value that I can trust you.”

“Tell me how I can help you.”

“Your love could only be deserved by someone who is perfect and I myself am so far from that.”

“So I should love you less?”

“No, never. I only ask that you love me so much that you be willing to hate me, for only a moment.” 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

“When I first met you, you spoke to me of Marcus Aurelius, of how there was no writer you admired more. You told me, quoting him, something like this, that one must be able to look a thing in the face and know it for what it is. Once, perhaps, you were able to hold me in that regard, at the beginning, before you loved me. Now, though, just now, I want you to speak to me, just this once, harshly, as though you noted my every flaw and even despised me for them.” 

I am no god. It is not my place to judge him or to condemn anyone. And yet - if this is what he asks of me - “You are sure this is what you wish?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will try.”

“My mother asks that I return. She asks- and yet every night I dream of poison ingested and pool after pool of blood spilled on stone. What should I do?”

I would do my duty but he is not me and I am not sure he will ever understand that, if each of us is made so differently, does it not follow that each of us might be crafted for an individual purpose? If I were to fail in my duties, then my own heart should break, but I sometimes think that it would be in trying to follow what others call his destiny that he would destroy himself. “What is it that you want?”

“To stay here.” His voice breaks. “To stay here with you.”

The answer is easy, so easy that it amazes me he can not see it for himself. “Then that is exactly what you must do.”


End file.
